


The Dark Arts of Fire Department Fakery

by burglebezzlement



Category: Hart of Dixie
Genre: Bluebell Volunteer Fire Department, Fire, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Norovirus, The Dixie Stop, Treat, background canon relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: This year, the Bluebell Volunteer Fire Department is going to pass the County inspection. Even if Lemon Breeland has to pick up a hose herself to make it happen.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box! You’re so right about Bluebell & Character being the best way to capture the relationships on this show. I really enjoyed getting a chance to write about Bluebell, and please excuse the world’s longest A/N ever. 
> 
> Canon is kind of inconsistent on the question of whether Bluebell has a fire department. They seem to in Season 1 (Tom comments that the firefighters don’t like being taken away from poker night when Wade’s dad is up on the roof, and George tries to re-stage the wedding in the old fire house), but by Season 4, they’re talking about the time delays from having to get firefighters in from Daphne and trying to get county funding for a fire station. I’m going with the S4 canon on this.
> 
> Set one year after the volunteer firemen fail to make it through the County inspection in S4E1, which should be about five months after Zoe and Wade got married and probably a little while before Lavon and Lemon do. 
> 
> Title is a take on a comment from AB in Season 4 about the dark arts of relationship fakery (something she and Lemon both know something about).

Tom Long’s curled up in his bed, his arms clutched around a blue plastic bucket. His hair is sticking up and his t-shirt is sweaty and wrinkled. Also, the t-shirt has a cat on it.

Lemon wrinkles her nose. “So? What’s the plan, safety marshall?”

“Just leave me here to die,” Tom moans.

“All your volunteers are out with norovirus and the County Fire Inspector comes tomorrow,” Lemon says. 

She’s being nice. She could point out that she offered to have Fancie’s cater that team-building dinner last night, but no, Tom thought a potluck would build team spirit. And now Mayor Lavon Hayes and the rest of the volunteer firefighters are down with norovirus, and if Daddy and Zoe Hart is right, it’s not going to clear up for another forty-eight hours.

“You do not get to die and leave this town without a Fire Department,” Lemon says. “Come on. Up.”

“He’s real sick,” Wanda says, from the doorway. “Maybe this isn’t our year to get that County funding, Lemon.”

“Well, that’s just not acceptable,” Lemon says.

She needs to come up with a plan.

* * *

Cricket answers the door like Wanda did: hushed tones, looking behind herself to where she’s got a patient.

“What is it, Lemon?” she asks.

Lemon pushes past her. She’s fully disinfected herself and she refuses to get this norovirus. If they’re going to get Bluebell that Fire Department funding, she’s got too much to do.

“Bluebell needs you,” Lemon says. “Get a list of what the county inspector’s going to test us on from Jaysene, and then come with me. We’ve got a Fire Department to save.”

“Have you lost it, Lemon?” Cricket’s eyebrows are raised up nearly into her hairline. “Everyone’s down with the flu!”

“First of all, it’s not the flu, it’s norovirus.” Zoe Hart corrected Lemon on that enough times this morning when Lemon was trying to find out if there was a cure. Turns out there isn’t, but there’s no way Lemon could have known that. “Second, we can save the Fire Department. We just have to be able to pass the drills tomorrow.”

“We’re completely untrained!”

“That is not true,” Lemon says. “I know you’ve been watching Jaysene train everyone. You want to tell me you really don’t know all that running-around stuff they do? And it’s not like putting on the fire gear would be the hardest costume change we’ve all had to do. You don’t even need to take off your other clothes first!”

“Well….” 

Cricket looks towards the door into their bedroom. Lemon can’t see inside, but she figures Jaysene is in there, curled up around a bowl or a bucket of her own.

“Excellent,” Lemon says. “Get that list, and then meet me at the town square.”

Cricket’s going to give in. Lemon would stay here and make sure of it, but she has other recruits to find.

* * *

Lemon looks at her rag-tag group with satisfaction.

 Eight recruits, many of them plausible as firefighters. She’s dragged Wade Kinsella over, because Wade never could resist a Lemon Breeland shenanigan, and anyway he’s got a restaurant too so he should care about a fire station. Cricket’s got the list of the drills they’ll be tested on from Jaysene, and several other Belles have volunteered after intense persuasion from Lemon.

Dash Dewitt is there, too, as an observer with a stopwatch. When Lemon stopped by Dash’s bed and breakfast, The Whippoorwill, she ran across Joel Stevens, who volunteered to come out even though he’s only visiting Bluebell. (Really volunteered, in Joel’s case. Lemon’s glad Joel’s visiting town, of course, but she’s not convinced he’s fire-fighting material.)

And then she’s got Daddy, of course, and a few more locals to round out their rag-tag group. They’re all standing in front of her in a line.

“Okay, troops,” Lemon says. “We’ve got the County Fire Inspector coming tomorrow at 9 AM sharp. By then we will be ready. We will be trained. And we will knock her socks off and get ourselves a new town Fire Department.”

She puts her hands behind her back and starts walking down the line. “Now you may be asking yourselves — can I really learn this in one day?” She gives them a moment to start nodding and then claps loudly. “Yes! Think about it. Belles, how many times have you learned a dance number the day before a performance? This is just another set of choreography. Wade, you should have volunteered for the Fire Department to begin with; you’ll catch up. And Daddy, you’ve been saving the town for years; this is just a new way for you to do that.”

Lemon’s just getting into the swing of her raising-the-troops speech, but then Dash has to go and ruin it by raising his hand.

“Yes?” Lemon says, impatiently. 

Dash clears his throat. “Dash Dewitt, local blogger. Is there any reason why Bluebell can’t call the County Fire Inspector and ask them to reschedule?”

Lemon smiles. “And tell them all our firemen have norovirus and please, please can’t they come back later?”

“Exactly,” Dash says. His face has the expression of a man who’s just seen his day open back up.

“Absolutely not,” Lemon says. “Do you think fires let you call and reschedule because your firemen got the flu? They do not.”

She looks her ranks up and down. No more questions. _Good._

“We’ve got a town Fire Department to save,” Lemon says. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

Jaysene wrote out instructions for getting into the firemen’s uniforms, which is good, because it’s a little trickier than Lemon thought.

Just a little. Mainly, trying to roll up the legs and sleeves of Lavon’s uniform so she can walk without tripping.

“They’ll just see how much we need the money,” she says, now, looking down the line of her recruits. Most of the Belles have their pants rolled up the way Lemon does, except for Elodie, who’s got Little Zach’s uniform, which leaves her fireman’s boots exposed all the way up.

“We’ll come back to this,” Lemon says. The time it’s taking them all to get into their uniforms is terrible, just terrible, but she’s not going to spend all day focusing on getting dressed and ignore the other drills.

While Dash times them, Lemon runs her rough group of recruits through all the things Lavon and George and all the rest spent so much time doing. Running with hoses takes Joel down — the hose comes unrolled and trips him up, and he goes sprawling. But once the hose is re-rolled, he does better, and he’s pretty good at getting the hose hooked up to their hydrant. 

_Maybe this will work,_ Lemon thinks.

And then they try the rescue drills. Elodie tries carrying the cut-out of the fire victim ahead of her, like it’s a dance and she’s expecting the cardboard cut-out to lead. Wade and Daddy do better — they sling the cutouts over their shoulders, at least — but then Daddy trips on the way back and falls down. 

“I don’t know, Lemonade,” he says, waving off her hand and catching his breath before pulling himself back up.

The bucket brigade doesn’t go much better. Cricket keeps dropping the buckets because of her oversized gloves, and none of them have the hang of throwing the water at the end.

“Come on,” Lemon says. Her troops are all sitting on the grass, uniforms half-on and half-off. “We can do this.”

They don’t look convinced. But they get back up again.

* * *

Lemon’s nervous the next morning until everyone’s there. She sent them all home the night before with bleach water spray bottles and instructions to clean everything, but still — a virus that can take out a whole Fire Department? She was expecting at least one person to get sick.

 _Just a little longer,_ she reminds herself. Once the County Fire Inspector is gone, they can get as many stomach bugs as they want.

The County Fire Inspector is on time. There’s a crowd gathered to watch, but Lemon’s given them strict instructions. No mentions of the flu. No letting on that the firefighters the inspector is here to watch might not be the regular ones.

“Welcome to Bluebell,” Lemon says, shaking the inspector’s hand. “We’re just so pleased you’re here.”

The inspector raises one eyebrow. _So she hasn’t forgotten about last year,_ Lemon thinks, and swallows.

“Shall we get started?” the inspector asks. She’s got her clipboard in hand.

There’s a few hiccups at first — Joel still doesn’t have the trick of getting into the boots, and Elodie stumbles on the hose-carry drill. But nobody falls down, and Daddy and Wade manage to rescue the cardboard cut-out fire victims in record time. 

_We look like we know what we’re doing,_ Lemon thinks, while Cricket and Wade work together to get the firehose connected to the hydrant.

“Good work,” the inspector says, once they’ve finished all the drills. Lemon’s taken her helmet off, but she’s still in the rest of her fire gear when she shakes the inspector’s hand again.

“So — we passed?” Lemon asks, heart in her throat.

The inspector smiles. “Let me file the paperwork with the county before we make anything official. But based on what I saw here, I’d say Bluebell’s going to get some new fire equipment sooner rather than later.”

Lemon smiles. “That’s wonderful news.”

But before she can turn to give everyone the thumbs up, Frank comes running across the square like he’s got Burt Reynolds chasing him. He’s out of breath when he skids to a stop in front of Lemon and the inspector.

“Not now, Frank,” Lemon says, through gritted teeth. “We’re with the Fire Inspector right now.”

“But it’s Fire Department business,” Frank says. “I got a big problem down at the Dixie Stop.”

“We can deal with it later,” Lemon says, trying to keep a smile on her face. 

“But the problem’s a fire!” 

Lemon turns to him and drops her voice so the inspector can’t hear. “You’d better be serious. We already passed the inspection.”

“Oh, I’m serious as a sale on grits,” Frank says. “I was trying to make a new invisible ink, for my detective agency, only something didn’t work right and now my trash can’s on fire. Only now I’m talking to you so maybe it’s the whole Dixie Stop by now.”

Lemon swallows. Can they fight a fire? A real fire, not the cardboard cut-out fire they rescued the fake victims from? Tom Long, as the head of the Bluebell Volunteer Fire Department Development Committee, has had endless meetings with Lavon and all the rest, drilling them in how to fight a fire, and Lemon’s overheard a bunch of those training sessions. Only… is overheard information enough? Lemon’s team of rag-tag recruits might be able to pass the drills, but they don’t know what they’re doing. Not really. 

But if they wait for the fire fighters from Daphne to respond, the whole Dixie Stop could burn down. Lemon remembers what it was like when Fancie’s burned down. She doesn’t want to put another Bluebell business owner through what she went through.

“Okay, troops,” she tells her recruits. “We’ve got a fire to put out.”

* * *

When they arrive at the Dixie Stop, there’s a crowd standing outside, watching as smoke billows out an open window at the front, near where Frank has his detective agency desk.

The fire inspector followed them there, which Lemon figures is good and bad. Hopefully the inspector will stop them if they try anything really dangerous. Hopefully. But if things don’t go well….

Lemon snaps into action. “Cricket, interview the witnesses and find out if we have anyone left inside who we need to get out. Daddy, you check the temperature of the door. If it’s really hot, we’ll have to figure out another way in. Joel and Elodie, you get the hose hooked up. The rest of you, gather buckets.”

Daddy reports that the door isn’t hot, which means Lemon has to make a decision. 

“I’m going in,” she says, in the tone of voice that says nobody gets to argue with her. She’s not letting anyone else get hurt if she’s making the wrong call here by trying to fight this fire.

Lemon opens the door slowly, her heart pounding in her chest. Inside, it’s dark and smoky. The familiar Dixie Stop seems like a different place while Lemon checks for potential fire victims and then zeroes in on the source of the smoke: a flaming metal trash can next to Frank’s desk.

She backs out of the Dixie Stop, carefully, and then reports to her team.

“Right now, it’s just the trash can that’s on fire,” she says. “Frank, you got a fire extinguisher in there?”

“Uh….” Frank pulls at his collar. “Tom’s always telling me I need one, but….”

Lemon makes a mental note to tell Lavon that Bluebell doesn’t just need a Fire Department — it needs a fire inspector. She has eight fire extinguishers down at the new Fancie’s, all checked once a month, and there’s no reason any business in town couldn’t do likewise.

“Bucket chain,” she says. She made Frank tell her all the chemicals he was using for his ink on the way over. Water should be safe for this fire. 

The recruits form a rough bucket chain, passing the buckets of water down the line to Lemon and Wade, inside the Dixie Stop, who douse the contents of the trash can with water and put out the fire.

Once Lemon confirms that the fire really is out, the team helps Frank open up all the windows that can open, and then heads back outside to let the smoke clear. 

“That was good work,” the fire inspector says to Lemon, once everyone’s out and they’ve allowed Frank to go back inside. “I can’t make any promises, understand, but I think your town will be looking at some real funding.”

Lemon smiles. “All in a day’s work for the Bluebell Volunteer Fire Department.”

* * *

After organizing the return of all the uniforms and providing Frank with smoke removal tips, Lemon heads home.

Lavon is sprawled out across their bed. He looks up at her blearily from his pillow. “Why do you smell like smoke?”

“Because we fought a real fire,” Lemon says, sitting down gingerly at the edge of the bed. “We stopped the Dixie Stop from burning down.”

Lavon squints. “That wasn’t part of the inspection.”

“Of course not, silly,” Lemon says. “We passed the inspection. And then there was a fire at the Dixie Stop, so we fought it.”

“Really?”

“You made me Acting Fire Chief,” Lemon says. “The position came with responsibilities.”

Lavon smiles, slow and easy, and Lemon’s heart does that strange little squeezey thing in her chest. 

“Lemon Breeland,” Lavon says. “You are full of surprises.”


End file.
